Don't you just hate it when that drop-dead gorgeous 65/66 Mustang of yours won't start? Or when you turn on the radio and the turn signals start flashing? If you have any questions that you think I might be able to help you with, or, if I have posted something that still doesn't seem to be as clear as it could be, please feel free to ask.

Hello

There is a very large class of people that own 65/66 Mustangs that, as far as I can tell, anyway, have been, for the most part, ignored entirely. They don't really want that 100 pt. show car that is so nice and was soooo expensive that they're afraid to drive it, they also don't want to make their car capable of achieving warp factor three. They just want this car that they dearly love to be able to cruise around smoothly and reliably, without having it dump them out on the side of the road or have it start making weird noises or belching out big clouds of funky-smelling smoke. And I think, truth be told, that this is by far the largest class of Mustang owners. They take their car to some technician when what they actually need is a mechanic, and this, frequently, does not work out very well at all for the owner. They don't want to re-engineer the entire car, they just want someone to fix what broke. These are the people that I am trying help out with this blog. Some problems require a little bit of back and forth, as in, "Try this." "I tried that and it didn't change anything."" Oh. well, you probably need to try that." " I tried that and it helped, but it still isn't quite right." "Now you need to try this...." If you go to http://www.allfordmustangs.com/ and then go to the classics forums, you will be able to do that with a pretty hefty gathering of some very knowledgeable people that also happen to be very friendly. None of that ridiculous one-upmanship, no flaming or abuse, none of that stuff. Just good, solid advice from people that know what they are talking about.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

How to distinguish a factory GT from a non-GT

This is a question that seems to come up on a fairly regular basis. I haven't gotten around to writing anything about this because a nice man named Steve Schwartz at Mustang Dreams asked me to help him out while he wrote something about this, and he did a very good job with the subject. But, it can't hurt to have the information in as many places as possible, so, here goes.

The GT package on a 65/66 Mustang included :Front disc (non-power) brakesDual exhaust with the exhaust trumpets exiting through the rear valence, not underneath it

heavy duty front and rear shocks:64 1/2-65 front shocks were the C4ZF-18045-E66 front shocks were the C5ZF-18045-B64 1/2-66 rear shocks were the C4ZF-18080-A, -B, or -C

Quicker steering box gear ratio of 16:1 instead of the standard 19.9:1. The manual steering cars will have the HCC-AX tag, and the power steering cars will have the HCC-AW tag. All power steering cars, not just the GTs, have the steering gear box tag of HCC-AW, so, on a power steering car, this tells you nothing.

Rocker molding and quarter ornament delete. The GTs had the no rocker molding or quarter ornament because they had the GT stripes.

No running pony on the fenders, or the small Mustang script. They had the GT fender badge and the Mustang script down lower in individual letters.

GT gas cap on the 66s, standard gas cap on the 65s

Fog lights

The factory GTs, since they had the dual exhaust exiting through the rear valence, did not have the rear bumperettes, or any of the attaching brackets for those. They also have reinforcement plates inside the driver's side rear frame rails for the driver's side exhaust hangers, which a single exhaust car did not have.

The only 65/66 Mustangs that came with the GT package were 'A' code or 'K' codes. There were no 6 cylinder cars or cars that came with a 2bbl carb that also came with the GT package.

The GT package was not available for purchase until mid April of 65, and consequently, any car with a scheduled production date before February of 65 definitely did not come with the GT package. Sometimes, people will have a new door tag made with an unreliable scheduled production date on it, but, the sequential production number of the car in the VIN, the last six digits, are not something that a person could alter without committing a felony. So, you can generally trust that a lot more.

On a Dearborn built 65 Mustang, it would have to have the last six digits of the VIN be a number higher than 620,000.On a San Jose built 65 Mustang, it would be a number higher than 180,000.On a Metuchan built 65 Mustang, it would be difficult to argue that the production number was too low, because that plant started building Mustangs at about the same time that Ford started building Mustangs with the GT package. It was a little bit before, but not by much.

That's actually a very interesting subject, which doesn't really have a simple yes/no answer. it is true that a dealership would be happy to install the fog lights in your car, or the front disc brakes, etc.. But, you would very soon run into the problem of cost on some things. The steering gear box would not be that bad, but, the GT stripes and badges would also require painting the car because you would have to remove the quarter ornament from a convertible or a coupe, you would have to remove the rocker molding, running pony an fender script from all three body styles, which would leave a whole bunch of holes in the sides of the car that would need to be filled. The reinforcement inside the driver's side rear frame rail isn't going to happen at a dealership, and the reinforcement in the floor pan would call for a lot more work than the dealership would want to do when they could just hang the dual exhaust without that stuff, since the owner doesn't know it's supposed to be there. It would be far cheaper for the owner to just order a car that came from the factory with the GT package any color he wanted, with any interior, any options, etc..

The question of dealer installed GT packages is almost invariably brought up by someone that is trying to sell a non-GT car, but, they would like to get GT money for it, so, don't fall for that one. There weren't any dealer-added GT packages, and, even if a dealership had installed most of the stuff, it still isn't a factory GT.

That sure doesn't sound like something that would be easy or economic to do at the dealership. When I restored my C-code 66 a couple of years ago I decided to go with the complete GT clone look while the car was in piece and stripped to bare metal. Didn't do any of the under-carriage mods but did hang dual exhaust and put in frame rail extenders. Had a deluxe interior to begin with so that was no problem. My purpose was simply to enjoy the car and pass it down to my son - I will never sell it so its value as a Gt, real or otherwise, is meaningless to me. Its been in the family since late 65 - I just changed its clothes a bit :)

The GT stuff is easy to do if you are in the process of buildi. Not so easy after the car has already been built.With your car being a 'C' code, there is no possibility of it having come from the factory with the GT package, so, by all means, go for it. Get the car looking like you want it to look.